


Loneliness

by MetaBeeBoppin



Category: RWBY
Genre: F/F, Nightmares, Sleepiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-25
Updated: 2014-09-25
Packaged: 2018-02-18 17:30:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2356628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MetaBeeBoppin/pseuds/MetaBeeBoppin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An heiress finds herself in a difficult position and doesn't know whether to put her friends or her legacy first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loneliness

**Author's Note:**

> This took me weeks to finish and I feel like I kind of ended up rushing it towards the end. But given that I haven't uploaded anything since November last year, I really wanted to upload this to see how it went down. It's an example of me attempting to be thought-provoking and probably failing miserably (because of the rushing). Oh well, hope you guys enjoy it anyway.

Bundled up comfortably in a nest of pillows and blankets upon her bed, the snow-haired heiress busied herself with the mountain of homework that had been assigned to her. Weiss strained her eyes, attempting to read the words in her textbook using the little light provided by the setting sun outside. As she was by her lonesome, the dormitory room was completely silent aside from the sound of Weiss tapping her pencil against the hardback bindings of her book.

A bead of sweat broke from her forehead from stress. She found it irritating how Professor Port would assign masses upon masses of reading in anticipation for a test the following day, but would spend the actual lesson recounting a story of a boxing match with an Ursa. She found his teaching methods to be… questionable. 

Though she had to admit, it was an amusing image.

With a small sigh of restrained frustration, Weiss closed the book and buried it somewhere in the blankets she had accumulated. She was confident that, even with the little reading that she had done, that she would still perform exceptionally well on the day of the test. She wrapped herself tighter into the covers of her bed, and absorbed the atmospheric silence.

Though Weiss did, of course, like her teammates, the rarity of a vacant, silent dorm room came with a kind of melancholy pleasure. Being alone with nought but her own thoughts was a pleasant change of pace from the borderline constant rabble-rousing caused by Ruby and her sister, Yang. Loneliness allowed her to think. Loneliness allowed her to think of home, her father, her sister, her studies, and her future… without being interrupted by any of her teammates. 

Loneliness was good.

“Hellooooo, Miss Schnee!” cried Yang as she kicked the door open and marched into the room with what appeared to be a bucket of fried chicken under her arm. Blake followed, her eyes glued to a novel she was holding, apparently unfettered by Yang’s unceremonious entrance.

“Yang, please! Some people are trying to study!” Weiss retorted, flinging her bed sheets from her shoulders in some sort of tantrum.

“Closing your textbook is an awfully funny way to go about studying,” Blake muttered, her amber eyes peeking over the rim of her book. Weiss opened her mouth to answer back, but decided against it. Instead she folded her arms huffily and glared out the window. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Yang and Blake exchange a high five, and Weiss gritted her teeth.

She was irritated - not only had the two of them interrupted the peace and quiet, it was almost as if the two of them didn’t care. If any of the members of Team RWBY performed poorly in a test, it would make the entire team look bad. And Weiss, though she liked her team mates very much, had a reputation to uphold. No one was going to place a failure in charge of the Schnee Dust Company - that much was certain.

“How do you expect to pass if you don’t study?” Weiss seethed, narrowing her eyes at Yang.

“I thought I’d just wing it,” Yang replied, waving a piece of fried chicken in the air. Weiss’ jaw dropped and she stared at Blake, appalled. 

“I thought it was sort of funny,” the raven-haired faunus said, with a little smirk. Weiss made a groaning noise and shook her head in disbelief.

“Isn’t there somewhere else you can go to…” Weiss started, casting her eyes towards Yang, whose cheeks were puffing out from being full of food, “… eat chicken? I actually care about my academic success and I want to study!”

Hastily swallowing her food and seizing a drumstick from her chicken bucket, Yang furrowed her brow at the girl sitting on the bed across from her. 

“You haven’t even looked at that book since we walked in… you’ve just spent this whole time shrieking at us!” she exclaimed accusingly, pointing the drumstick in Weiss’ direction dramatically. The heiress’ nose turned up at the greasy fried poultry being waved in her face. She batted the blonde’s hand out of the way, and her expression transformed to match her gradually mounting anger.

“I’m not shrieking! I just think you have better things to be doing than going out and messing around!” Weiss shrieked. Yang pounded her fist into the pillow and surged to her feet, glaring down at Weiss.

“Why can’t I just relax sometimes!? And why are you making such a big deal out of this!?” she yelled back. Her red-hot rage was beginning to burn in her eyes, and Weiss noticed this. Pushing Yang too much was never a good idea, so Weiss simply folded her arms and stared out the window, remaining silent. 

After a few seconds, Yang calmed down, settling back down onto Blake’s bed. An uncomfortable quietness descended upon the room. None of the three girls uttered a word to one another. Weiss felt a distressing tightness in the pit of her stomach. She glanced over at Blake, who was standing awkwardly by the door, reading the same page of her book over and over again. 

“’ere’s ‘Ooby?” muttered Yang, who had been carefully eating her food so as to not make any noise. Weiss pursed her lips, deciding not to say anything about Yang’s reprehensible manners.

“She was in the library the last time I saw her,” Blake replied, speaking for the first time in several minutes, “I think she was studying for Professor Port’s test tomorrow.” 

Weiss raised her eyebrows. There was her solution - the ever faithful library. Perhaps if she went there under the pretence of looking for Ruby, she would be able to get some peace and quiet; the lovely, atmospheric type of peace and quiet, rather than the unsettling post-argument type. She grabbed her textbook from the folds of her blankets and stood up.

“I’m going to go and see her,” she announced to the rest of the room. Blake nodded and Yang uttered a mumbled goodbye. 

As she traversed into the hallway and the silence swathed over her again, she found herself mulling over the events that had just happened. Yes, she had started an argument over something minor - but she was simply looking out for herself, wasn’t she? Her education, her progression, had to be prioritised, and if she slipped up, her future - her family’s future - could come crashing down around her. Shutting out Yang and Blake was, in all honesty, the last thing she wanted to do.

But sometimes it was unavoidable.

Unavoidable, like the crucial moments of silence Weiss cherished. Unavoidable, because she needed to remind herself of her position, and remind herself of the pressure upon her shoulders. The expectations that she felt she needed to exceed sometimes seemed so out of reach, and she couldn’t bear to disappoint anyway. So… sometimes it just hurt less to shut people out than to let them in.

Weiss walked into a door.

Rubbing the sore spot on her forehead while cursing an inanimate object, Weiss opened the door and passed through into Beacon’s library. Her eyes scanned the books on the shelves with casual interest as she roamed around the room, searching for her teammate. There weren’t many students around, seeing as it was late in the day - Weiss noticed the orange tones of sunset were beginning to filter through the windows. 

She rounded a corner and her vision was suddenly bestowed a splash of red and black. Her partner, Ruby Rose, was indeed still in the library. However, her face was plastered against an open textbook as she snoozed softly, a trail of saliva dribbling from her open mouth onto the pages. Weiss rolled her eyes, wondering how long she had been asleep for. Knowing Ruby, it could have been as long as an hour. 

She approached her slumbering partner. Her arm was outstretched, poised to prod Ruby and wake her up. Weiss’ outstretched finger hovered over Ruby’s shoulder, but then a noise escaped the young girl’s lips.

“… n-no…” 

Weiss hesitated. Her arm retracted without her noticing. She paused for a moment, confused by Ruby’s mutterings, but shook it off and moved closer. She bowed down so her face was near Ruby’s.

“Ruby, wake up,” she breathed into her ear. The younger huntress gave a squirm of agitation and then relaxed back against the book. Weiss shook her head in irritation.

“… n-no!”

The white-haired girl’s eyebrows furrowed. Her eyes locked onto Ruby’s face. There was urgency in Ruby’s voice now; it seemed as though she was having a nightmare about something. Weiss hesitated again, no longer sure whether to awaken her squad mate or not.

“… Mom…”

The word didn’t register until Weiss saw the tear staining the paper. Her face fell.

Something was very wrong. Weiss knew that Ruby was a restless sleeper, but she had never spoken during a dream - no, a nightmare, in this case. She never spoke about her family. Neither did Yang. Usually Weiss would assume they were much too chipper to bother, but the truth was that Weiss had never even asked.

And now, as she saw the terrible loneliness etched into Ruby’s young face and the tears rolling down her cheek; she really, really wished she had. 

“Ruby, it’s okay, I’m here,” Weiss whispered, in an unusually tender tone. She found herself lightly stroking the crimson strands gracing the girl’s head, almost like a natural reaction. Another tear trickled down Ruby’s cheek, but her expression seemed to soften. 

“I’m here, Ruby, everything’s okay…” 

The young huntress settled, and her eyelids fluttered open. 

“… Weiss…?” she mumbled sleepily. Ruby unleashed a loud, but awfully cute, yawn, and then propped herself up in her chair. The side of her head that had been using the book as a pillow was all messy and dishevelled, like a bird’s nest, and also looked sort of damp. 

“How long have you been asleep down here?” Weiss interrupted, slightly harsher than she had intended. Ruby’s eyes widened and she babbled senselessly, erratically glancing around the room either for a clock or an escape route. Weiss sighed to herself, but was unable to stop herself from giving a little smirk at her partner’s behaviour. 

“Oh man, I completely zoned out when I was studying… I’m so screwed…” Ruby groaned up at the ceiling. “I wish Yang and Blake hadn’t left me here…”

Weiss’ smile faltered. 

“They were here with you?” she asked quietly, raising an inquisitive eyebrow. Ruby nodded at her, and then scratched her chin thoughtfully.

“Yeah - y’know, I think they actually went looking for you. Apparently they hadn’t seen you since this morning! Kinda annoying that I fell asleep while they were gone, but…”

Her head tilted to one side, and her grey eyes stared into Weiss’ blue ones.

“… it was really lonely without you here, Weiss!” 

A cold and heavy sense of guilt tightened in the bottom of Weiss’ stomach. Memories of her shouting match with Yang suddenly flooded back. She saw the moisture glistening off of Ruby’s cheeks, which framed a sweet, kind smile. Weiss understood the benefits of pushing her friends away. She couldn’t become too close to people, she couldn’t let them get in the way of her grand legacy. But, as she looked into Ruby’s tearful eyes and sincere smile, she had to wonder; how many times could she push her friends away, only for them to come back?

There was a part of her that imagined they would come back every time. And right now, that wasn’t something she felt she deserved.

“And you cried… because you were lonely?” Weiss swallowed hard, knowing that this was a pointless question to an inevitable answer.

“Ehehehe… I was kind of hoping you wouldn’t notice…” Ruby chuckled.

“For the love of…” Weiss grumbled, and leaned forward. She gripped the laced sleeve of her dress and cleaned away the tears from the cheeks of her partner’s scowl. Somehow, it reminded her of the expression a child would make when their mother was cleaning dirt of their cheeks. Weiss’ smile returned. 

“What are you smiling about?” Ruby asked curiously, nudging Weiss’ arm out of the way. The heiress hesitated for a moment, and then shrugged. 

“Never you mind. Now come on, let’s go see the others, I owe them an apology.”

“Weiss, what did you do this ti-“

The both of them had stood up at the same time and found their free hands were interlinked with one another. Two sets of eyes, one grey, one blue, widened to stare at the hand holding theirs. Both of them were completely unaware of when it had happened, how it had happened, why it had happened. The cold, heavy sensation in Weiss’ stomach vanished, and in its stead she felt warm. Warm, and like she was floating on air. For once, she didn’t want to push Ruby away, she wanted to pull her closer, keep her near. 

Not because Weiss needed Ruby, but because she knew Ruby needed Weiss. 

“Err, Weiss, not that I don’t love the hand holding, but you’ve been staring into space for a million years and I’m actually really concerned about the possibility that you’ve just died.”

Weiss shook her head, waking herself up from a daydream.

“What?”

“Never mind, crisis over!” A silly grin plastered itself on Ruby’s lips as she giggled at Weiss, who narrowed her eyes and scowled at her partner. 

“Let’s just go.”

“Still holding hands, then?”

“Be quiet.”

===***===

As the moonlight filtered through the narrow crack in the curtains, silence fell upon Team RWBY’s dorm. Weiss was the only one who lay awake, the sheen of the moon reflecting off her silvery tresses. The calm was unbroken even by Ruby, who was sleeping restlessly for the first time in weeks. 

Moments like this allowed Weiss to think. Moments of peace, whether she was alone or not. They allowed her to think of her father, her sister, her studies. They allowed her to think of the journey she must take, the sacrifices that she may one day have to make, and the fears that she had yet to overcome.

And from that night on, they allowed her to think of Ruby.


End file.
